Long before Avery Brooks broke the color barrier in "Star Trek" wide open, Paul Winfield did a damn impressive job of getting his foot in the door. Hell, he must have been a pretty great actor, since he even made Walter Koenig's performance palatable! First star on the left, mon captain, and on till morning...
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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Paul Winfield, an Academy Award-nominated actor who was known for his versatility in stage, film and television roles, including a highly praised 1978 depiction of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has died. He was 62.
Winfield died Sunday of a heart attack, said his agent Michael Livingston.
In 1968, Winfield played the boyfriend of Diahann Carroll in her situation comedy "Julia" -- a role that some suggest helped open television to other black performers.
Four years later Winfield's portrayal of the father in "Sounder" earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.
He was Emmy-nominated for best actor in the title role of the 1978 miniseries "King," and nominated the next year in the best supporting actor category for playing a college chancellor willing to sing Negro spirituals to get donations for his school in "Roots: The Next Generation."
He finally won an Emmy in 1995 for a guest appearance on "Picket Fences." He played a federal judge whose rulings on busing inner-city children are challenged by a local resident.
Despite acclaim, Winfield was often relegated to supporting roles, including playing Jim in a 1974 remake of "Huckleberry Finn."
Sidney Poitier hired Winfield for his first movie role in "The Lost Man" in 1969. Other significant roles included an appearance in the Broadway play "Checkmates" with Denzel Washington, and his portrayal of Don King in a 1995 HBO movie.
A Los Angeles native, Winfield was born May 22, 1941. Until he was 8, he was raised by union organizer Lois Edwards, who later married Winfield's stepfather.
He was bused to the predominantly white Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles and was named best actor for three years in a row in an annual Southern California high school drama competition.
He later studied drama at four colleges before leaving the University of California at Los Angeles six credits short of a bachelor's degree.
He is survived by his sister, Patricia Wilson, of Las Vegas.
Winfield was a commanding presence and quality actor, but the Star Trek role I will best remember him for is not Capt. Terrell, but an almost unidentifiable (but very moving) alien role in ST: TNG. The episode is called DARMOK. Winfield played the Captain of a ship (kind of a counterpart to Picard) who teams with Picard on a desolate planet (very "ARENA"-esque) in a death struggle against a local planetary beast in an effort to teach the metaphorical and ritualistic beliefs of his culture to Picard. This was one of the few episodes which didn't sidestep the issue of communication difficulties likely to be encountered between alien species (usually sidestepped on Star Trek with the fairly lame "universal translator" conceit.)
Winfield gave great weight and integrity to his roles and was largely responsible for this episode being as good as it was with his sympathetic and sensitive portrayal of a particularly goofy-looking alien that could have easily been unintentionally humorous in the hands of a lesser actor.
(paraphrasing from memory--)
Darmok and Gilad at Tenaugra.
Darmok and Gilad on the river.
Shaka! When the walls fell.
Shaka! His eyes open.
Darmok at rest. Darmok at peace.
The list has ZERO credibility for me, mind you, since a TOS episode scores no higher than 12, and that is "City on the Edge of Forever" -- leaving it very hard for me to imagine 11 episode of NextGen or DS9 that could have been better. (I mean, come on! "Trials and Tribblations" is my "favorite" post-TOS STAR TREK episode, and no way would I rank it above "City".) That only 2 other TOS eps make it onto this list, and one of them is 3rd Season. . . ! ("Wink of an Eye" -- the boot-pulling episode. sigh That this beat out "The Trouble with Tribbles", "Arena", "The Naked Time", "Tomorrow is Yesterday", and, well, just about any 1st or 2nd season ep sort of underlines what civilians think of Trekkies, doesn't it?)
(Edited to fix link.)
This message has been edited by lindaburns on Mar 9, 2004 4:06 PM This message has been edited by johnbyrne on Mar 9, 2004 4:03 PM
How anyone can put Trouble With Tribbles below the top 5 is beyond me. That is my favorite episode in all of Trek and has to be high on a good majority of other fans lists, too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Good Judgement comes from Experience
And Experience comes from... Bad Judgement
There was a wonderful nonchalance to those. I would get an image in my head of him slouched in a corner booth in a neighborhood bar, telling the stories from memory.
I first saw Mr. Winfield in the King miniseries when it originally aired. Though I hadn't seen him in many roles of late, I always had respect and admiration for his work.
Paul Winfield will be missed and fondly remembered. He was an actor that people admired for his dignity and professionalism, in an era when we didn't see black men always represented in a positive light in films. He didn't portray shuffling, bumbling negative stereotypes; he portrayed characters with a sense of depth, strength and humanity.
I always liked Mr. Winfield when I saw his work. He'll be missed.
In keeping with the thread title, Capt. Terrell does seem to have a mystique, eh? Winfield's performance aside, could it be that fans were moved by his self-sacrifice for a man he'd never met (although some would say his refusal to kill Shatner was a result of ceti eel-inflicted madness)? Or the fact that he was in command of a really neat ship?
By the way, dialogue (presumably) filmed but deleted from TWOK (which appears in the shooting script and the novelization) states that Dr. McCoy and Capt. Terrell had served together before, and were friends. McCoy also has a moment of grief after Terrell's death.
